There Will Be More Cyber Threats In Coming Year

The year ahead will feature new and sophisticated means to capture and exploit user data, as well as escalating battles over the control of online information that threaten to compromise content and erode public trust and privacy. Those are the findings cited by the Georgia Tech Information Security Center and the Georgia Tech Research Institute in their report, Georgia Tech Emerging Cyber Threats Report for 2012. According to the findings, specific threats to follow over the coming year include, among others:

• Search Poisoning – Attackers will increasingly use SEO (search engine optimization) techniques to optimize malicious links among search results, so that users are more likely to click on a URL because it ranks highly on Google or other search engines.

• Stolen Cyber Data Use for Marketing – The market for stolen cyber data will continue to evolve as botnets capture private user information shared by social media platforms and sell it directly to legitimate business channels such as lead-generation and marketing.

Most citizens don’t realize how serious the cyber threat really is. Since we live in an era where computers are a part of our daily lives, it’s essential that government and the private sector work together in efforts to control the problem. Mustaque Ahamad, director of GTISC, stated:

We continue to witness cyber attacks of unprecedented sophistication and reach, demonstrating that malicious actors have the ability to compromise and control millions of computers that belong to governments, private enterprises and ordinary citizens. If we are going to prevent motivated adversaries from attacking our systems, stealing our data and harming our critical infrastructure, the broader community of security researchers—including academia, the private sector and government—must work together to understand emerging threats and to develop proactive security solutions to safeguard the Internet and physical infrastructure that relies on it.

The report was released at the annual Georgia Tech Cyber Security Summit. The summit was keynoted by Admiral William J. Fallon, U.S. Navy (retired) and included a panel of security experts from Equifax, The Financial Services Roundtable, Mobile Active Defense, Reputation.com and GTRI. Bo Rotoloni, director of GTRI’s Cyber Technology and Information Security Laboratory, observed:

We can no longer assume our data is safe sitting behind perimeter-protected networks. Attacks penetrate our systems through ubiquitous protocols, mobile devices and social networking, circumventing the network perimeter. It’s said by the experts that our best defense on the growing cyber war front is found in “cooperative education and awareness, best-of-breed tools and robust policy developed collaboratively by industry, academia and government.” The entire report is available at http://gtsecuritysummit.com/report.html. I suggest our readers take the time to review it.